Flying solo in my fifties

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This Christmas and New Year are game-changers for me. For once I haven’t fled the country, or stayed in a place I don’t want to be with people I don’t like, or roamed moodily around my own home, feeling a bit sorry for myself.

I left the decision whether or not to fly away until pretty much the last moment. I knew the guy I’m seeing would be working most of the time and only free on Christmas Day. I knew that people were saying they’d be around (those that weren’t going away) but I also knew that when it came to it, I probably wouldn’t see any of them.

People are funny about going into hiding during the Christmas holidays. They disappear from Twitter – announcing that they’re ‘taking a break’ to be with family – then suddenly they’re back, taking a break from their families…

Anyway, this year there has been no break or flight from anything for me, except the office. I know enough about Christmas now to realise that the best bit is the run-up to it. I started enjoying the party season from December 1, knowing that come the 25th it’s going to be a bit of an anti-climax, or at least a post-party chill-out (this is precisely why I start enjoying summer on June 1 – if you wait for the ‘big day’ when the sun is at its hottest, you’ve missed out on all the fun. And the big day may never arrive…)

It was a very Christmas different for me. My guy is Muslim so it was a no-booze zone and I made a halal lamb dish for us both. It was quite liberating, heading into Sainsbury’s on Christmas Eve, hearing people shouting, “WHERE ARE THE BLOODY PARSNIPS??”, knowing I wouldn’t be buying anything remotely involved in a traditional Christmas dinner.

The world didn’t end because I didn’t observe a single tradition, apart from present-opening and a pre-dinner walk. The biggest surprises of the day were finding out that my guy likes Rick Stein documentaries, animated children’s films and Gladiator. We ended up watching The Revenant, hardly joyful Christmas viewing, but at least it was set in a wintery landscape. It wasn’t White Christmas, but I enjoyed it anyway.

My guy had had his birthday a week earlier, and made it feel like my birthday by bringing around an enormous cake for me. For me! I was struck by the generosity of it. The generosity of spirit which escaped me for years, when I was with someone incredibly mean-spirited. No completely unselfish acts, no celebration of anything good (unless initiated by me), no joy in sharing a life with another person. Just being frogmarched around a shopping mall to select my own gift, which was inevitably a high-ticket consumer good because it was easy and required little thought.

Two of my best friends are Jewish and do a sort of ‘Chrismukkah’ which I rather love. We joke that they have become my ‘Jewish mothers’ but I’ve realised that they have actually become my family here in north-west London. They phone me to catch up, even though I hate phones, and I love it. They sought me out this year, separately, to arrange to meet for gift-giving and pre-Christmas cheer. I love them dearly for that. Please keep phoning me, ladies. I love it, honestly.

The week before Christmas, one of my oldest friends arrived in the country from Qatar and arranged to meet me in Kensal Rise, where I live. It had been a difficult day, because what is left of my actual family were meeting in Wales for a Christmas dinner and for reasons I won’t go into here, I couldn’t attend.

Kensal put on a show as though I’d been rehearsing it for months. The chatty barman, the friends popping past to say ‘hi’, the local pub quiz we entered into with gusto, the knowledge that these smiling friends were here to see me and that they are a big part of my life and history. The universe spoke to me loud and clear: this is my home and these people are my family.

In between Christmas and New Year I arranged to see another old friend (we date back to university), who is the mother of my godson. Thanks to the generosity of yet another one of my London Jewish framily we got free tickets to a Christmas show in Manchester and a backstage tour afterwards. I introduced my old friend to my London friend and felt grateful to have both of them in my life.

I started to think about all the good souls – the people who really matter. They are marked by their kindness and generosity. They are consistent and don’t have any agenda. They like to see me and I like to see them. It’s so beautifully simple.

My northern odyssey continued with a night out with my brother, ending up in a bar on the infamous Canal Street. Much fun was had. Over dinner I told him that the thing that most impressed me at his 60th birthday party was a) that he’d served the guests dinner himself, and b) friends of his that I’d never met came up to me and told me how kind he is to them and their families. We’re not the closest of siblings, but I am proud of who he is. And now I wonder why we’ve waited so long to have a night out in Manchester…

Finally I met up with my mum’s sister for a hug, a cup of tea and a chat. Like my mum and nan before her, she is wiser than wise. “Take each day one at a time,” were her parting words to me, and I shall. I shall.

The person who drove me to my aunt’s and came back and took me to the station at the end of the day was someone I know professionally: an illustrator. He’d also picked me up earlier, and cooked lunch for me and his family. Again, I was blown away by the generosity. The universe is literally throwing good souls at me right now.

So much crap has happened this year, I can’t wait to leave it behind and start a fresh new one. I’m not naive enough to think 2017 is going to be a bed of roses, but I’m going to be fifty, and I’m going to celebrate that with people that matter.

And in the words of Starsailor:

As I turn to you and I say
Thank goodness for the good souls
That make life better
As I turn to you and I say
If it wasn’t for the good souls
Life would not matter

Last year I decided to do Christmas alone in London. It felt right – like I could handle it. After three years of either being away on holiday or throwing myself into charity work for Crisis, I thought ‘I can do this’. I can be in my flat, on Christmas Day, on my own, and just be.

I planned it – I knew what the day would entail and I was really looking forward to it. I’d go for an early morning run; I’d make coffee and a hearty breakfast; I’d open my presents while watching something crap on TV, sitting next to my beautifully decorated tree. How hard could it be? I’d be seeing one of my friends whom I’d met at Crisis later that day, and enjoying a Christmas dinner with her and her flatmate. All good.

But oh my god. Those hours. Those long, long hours.

It really started going wrong on Christmas Eve. I’d left work full of seasonal joy (and prosecco) at around 4pm, slightly thinking that there might be a post-work pub moment. There wasn’t. Everyone went home. I went along to HMV and bought myself a boxset of something – can’t remember what. I went home, shrouded in increasing gloom.

Again, I’d thought there’d be some spontaneous socialising to be done back at the ranch – nothing doing. Everyone had, in the words of one neighbour, ‘fucked off for Christmas’. This is what people do (even though most of my local friends and neighbours are Jewish.)

But it was ok – I still had my plan and my dinner to go to.

It started so well – it was one of those crisp, sunny mornings and I ran a few laps of my local park saying ‘Merry Christmas!’ to passers-by who were walking dogs or hurrying to a family gathering. The endorphin rush got me through the next hour or so, as I made breakfast and slowly opened my presents.

I’d made a pact with myself not to look at social media, because I knew what I’d see – pictures of cosy Christmas family mayhem and drunken antics – but let’s face it, I broke the pact within a couple of hours.

I know what the reality of a family Christmas is because I’ve been there. The seasonal cheer lasts about four hours before the rows, the tears, the sniping, the wishing-I-was-anywhere-but-there feelings kick in, especially when they involve in-laws. But still, I believed the Facebook hype – that everyone was having the BEST time. Of course they’re bloody not.

To give myself credit, I lasted about four hours before giving in to the wallowing. My first mistake was ‘seeing no harm’ in opening one of my stack of prosecco bottles, just for a ‘glass or two’ over lunch. My second was to start watching an extremely romantic film that a friend had bought me on DVD for Christmas. There’s a reason why they don’t show these movies on Christmas Day – stick with the comedies, people.

Let’s just say that for the ensuing four hours after those mistakes were made, I descended into a pit of gloom so deep it resembled the Mines of Moria. It was like slowly dying and being reborn as I emerged from the pit at around 5pm, blinking, into the Christmas lights of my friend’s flat, and having a glass of champagne thrust into my hand. Little did the people I was with know, as I joined in laughing at the Morecambe & Wise Christmas Special and munching on pigs in blankets.

The memory of those few dark hours is enough to see me heading off on holiday this Christmas and New Year, alone, but not ‘doing Christmas’. I know I’ll be surrounded by ‘entertainment’ staff in the hotel, wearing Santa hats and trying to get me to be Christmassy but I’ll be relishing the non-Christianness of the location and reading a book on the beach. Why don’t the people in these hotels realise you’re there to get away from Christmas, not recreate it in their country?

I remember my first Christmas alone in Thailand, and a well-meaning couple who forced me to join them in a bar, because I ‘couldn’t be alone on Christmas Day’ – except I could and I wanted to be. Out there I was absolutely fine on my own – it was only other people’s perceptions that made me feel crap about it. And that was the year I had the worst New Year’s Eve EVER on my own, but the BEST New Year’s Day, on a motorbike in between two Thai women, touring round Koh Samui, followed by all-night clubbing.